A number of books have addressed ordination and the priestly life from a devotional or vocational vantage point, but few books have considered ordination from a truly theological perspective. Meanwhile, our time is obsessed with the more general question of leadership. 'Being Salt' addresses both ordination and leadership by taking as its point of departure the most distinctive yet often overlooked feature of ordination: indelibility — being ordained for life.

Being Salt offers several answers to the question, What is the church? Sumner wholeheartedly agrees with the Reformation emphasis on the ministry of the whole people of God. Still, he argues that we can only understand priesthood if we understand what one is ordained for. Indelibility — lifetime ordination — provides an entrée to the question of what sets the ordained apart.

In sum, Being Salt offers an evangelical argument for a catholic practice and so goes to the heart of what Anglicanism understands itself to be.